Effectiveness of etilefrine regimen for chylothorax after esophagectomy with thoracic duct resection

Management of postoperative chylothorax generally involves nutritional regimens as well as pharmacological and surgical therapies, but a clear consensus has yet to be reached.

Retrospective review of 371 patients who underwent esophagectomy for esophageal cancer was performed. They were patients with squamous cell carcinoma or adenocarcinoma of the esophagus including Siewert type I/II tumor of the esophagogastric junction who underwent subtotal esophagectomy. Of these patients, 19 patients who were diagnosed with chylothorax as a postoperative complication were enrolled in this study.

Conservative treatment achieved cure in 16 patients among 19 patients. The duration of chylothorax tended to be longer in the no-etilefrine group (n = 5) than in the etilefrine group (n = 11) (27.8 vs. 11.6 days; p = 0.078). The 14 patients among 19 patients resected the thoracic duct. Etilefrine was used in 12 of these 14 patients. Among these 12 patients, 3 required surgical treatment and the remaining 9 patients were cured with conservative treatment. The duration of chylothorax was shorter in the conservative treatment group than in the surgical treatment group (11.9 vs. 36.3 days; p = 0.052). In addition, with the use of etilefrine as adjuvant therapy, cure was achieved in 9 patients (75%) without surgical intervention.

The findings of this study suggest that when used concurrently with conventional treatments, etilefrine facilitates early chest tube removal. In addition, post-thoracic duct resection chylothorax, which frequently requires surgical treatment because of the general less effectiveness of conservative treatments, showed high successful rate (75%) to etilefrine treatment.